Messy
by Pandorama
Summary: There's always soap and water.


**A/N: **This piece is based off of the original script for the 6.01 premiere, entitled "Thunder Roadtrip," in which House mentions that Cuddy took four showers that weekend. Sponsored by Oykamu's generous donation to Tsumani Relief and the support of viewers like you. Wait. This is PBS, right?

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><p><strong>Messy<strong>

**1**

She lies draped across him, her heartbeat rhythmic against his chest. She caresses his calf with her bare foot. "We should shower."

"I kind of like you dirty." His fingers skim the indentations on her lower back.

"Be that as it may, your shoulder is going to get infected. And I can't sleep in a filthy bed."

He pauses, digesting her statement. "I didn't plan on doing much sleeping."

"I can't do _that _in a filthy bed, either. Not again, at least."

"Fine. Let me just hook up the waterproof sex swing, and we'll be set."

"House."

"What? You don't honestly expect a cripple to support that ass of yours on a slippery surface, do you?"

She looks up at him, and for the first time he doesn't have to will himself to contain his arousal when her eyes flash dangerously and narrow in warning. "If you want to see this ass again, you might not want to insult it."

"I wasn't insulting it." He slides a hand appreciatively over it. "I was simply pointing out that baby got back."

She rolls her eyes. "I have to call my mother to see if she can take Rachel for awhile. I'll shower after you."

He finds himself unable to object in the face of the subtext: she's going to stay.

The hot water is soothing, and while he'd rather emerge sore but sexed, he supposes it bodes well for the immediate future that his thigh has stopped throbbing. She peers around the doorway as he wraps himself in a towel. "I meant to ask if you wanted help with the glass."

"I figured I'd give you a break from cleaning up my messes, for once."

She smiles, and he can't help but appreciate how stunning she is, how she glows when she's happy. He hasn't seen her glow like that since she first got Rachel.

"All yours."

"Towel?"

He nods to one folded on the toilet seat. "Clean and everything."

"I'm impressed. I might have to tell Wilson you know how to do laundry."

"You naughty minx."

"You might be able to convince me to keep quiet for a price." The ease with which the flirtatious banter flows forth is not a surprise. It's been there all along, just buried under layers of sarcasm and insult.

She unhooks the single button she bothered to do up when she put on his shirt. He wonders if whoever invented button-down shirts intended them to look this good on the opposite sex. He leaves her be to shower, or at least, leaves the room. As soon as he hears the water begin to patter against the porcelain, he nudges the door open wide enough to watch.

House is not a romantic, but it's impossible not to marvel at just how beautiful she is.

**2**

"You already showered this morning," he whines, unwilling to relinquish his hold on her forearm as she slides off the sheets.

"Yes, and that was before you decided to try a live-action version of _9 ½ Weeks_ and got honey in...places."

"I thought I did a pretty good job of cleaning up after myself." His tongue grazes the corner of his mouth.

"You got a little bit distracted before the job was finished."

"I beg to differ. I think I finished that _job_ quite well."

She has to remind herself that it's okay to smile at that. Getting used to this will be a challenge - she's become so used to pretending his lewd comments don't amuse her. "Fastidious as you were about that one, there's still honey in places it shouldn't be." She shifts from one foot to the other, awkwardly. "And scotch. Which, by the way, burns. So if you don't mind, I'd like to take care of that."

He raises one eyebrow. "Want help?"

"Help, or something completely counter to the goal?"

"The second one."

She extends a hand and he allows her to steady him as he stands, a little wobbly on his already unstable feet from the alcohol and the incredulity of what they're doing. She hasn't even turned on the water before he's complicating things, touching and nipping and grabbing with greedy, ravenous hands. She stumbles backwards and up against the tile wall, right where she knows he wants her. "How exactly is this going to work?" she breathes, as he begins to suck honey from her hair.

"Not well, but I'm willing to die for the cause." He grasps the safety bar with one hand and her thigh with the other, guiding her knees apart, and she wishes getting clean always felt this good.

**3**

Her muscles ache as she begins her practice. She's loose and limber enough when it's just yoga, but it has been longer than she'd like to acknowledge since she's exerted that much energy in bed. Or on the sofa, in the shower, on the kitchen island, or anywhere else, for that matter. She gives herself a pass on down dog - that particular pose has been practiced thoroughly already.

He scuffs his way out of the bedroom, bleary-eyed, tufts of hair pointed in odd directions, scratching his midsection absent-mindedly. Cuddy studies him from her inverted position and thinks to herself that there's a metaphor buried in there, somewhere, the fact that even in the early hours of their relationship, he puts up no pretenses of being well-kept. Whereas it took Lucas months before he'd so much as burp in her presence, House is comfortable, has always been comfortable, being exactly who he is around her.

A finger runs a path over the rigid plane of her abdomen as she arches upside-down. "Where's the Kama Sutra when you need it?" he gripes.

She allows the corners of her mouth to creep upwards in a smile before folding her knees under her and lowering herself down, making a subtle show of her strength. He has to marvel at just how someone so petite can be quite that athletic. Bum leg or not, he suspects she'd hold her own against him at any sport imaginable - maybe not when he was nineteen and capable of planting a pick on the lacrosse field that would stop a guy twice his size, but there's no question as to which of them has aged more gracefully.

"So...just how steady are you in that inverted crab pose thingy?"

"It's called wheel, and I don't think I'm the one we need to worry about." She scrutinizes him. "How's your leg?"

"Still missing a piece. How's your vagina?"

She sighs, not unhappily. "I'm not trying to nag."

"And yet you still manage to. Isn't it funny how that works?" She follows him to the kitchen and tries to contain her disapproval as he swigs orange juice straight from the carton. "If it's a problem, you'll know. Signs include moaning unrelated to orgasm and lack of interest in said orgasm. Currently, that's not the case."

"I need to shower." She eyes him. "And to answer your earlier question, it could use a break, so if you don't mind, I think I'm going to do it solo."

"Hot."

She rolls her eyes. "_Shower_ solo."

"You tell yourself whatever you want. Just make sure it's me your picturing when you let your fingers do the walking."

**4**

"So much for just relaxing with a movie." She gingerly folds the oversized Rolling Stones tee shirt and hopes this isn't some sort of bad omen for the band.

"I said I was sorry." It's the closest to genuine chagrin she's seen on his face since their first face-to-face meeting after Mayfield. "Although you can't really blame a guy - that shirt barely covered your ass."

"It covered my ass just fine until you decided to play seamstress."

"I was concerned you'd trip." He pauses. "Also, it needed a better access route."

"I think that's what the opening in the bottom was for." She catches herself and groans. "Don't say – "

"That's what she said!" he cries, somewhere between mock and genuine glee.

That, she thinks, is going to be one of those things that she'll have to get used to.

"I'm not the one with wandering fingers, anyway. You brought this on yourself."

Cuddy begins heading for the bathroom. "I was trying to hold your hand. You decided to put something else in the way."

"Little Greg can't help it if he's feeling cuddly. Now that he's had a taste of you…and vice-versa – "

"Oh, _shut up_," she mutters, closing the bathroom door with him on the opposite side. She swears she can hear him grinning.

She glances down at herself. Somehow, this weekend has managed to mold itself into a multi-episode omen of things to come – hot and heavy, testing her flexibility both literally and figuratively, lobbing doubts and opportunities every which way, and incredibly, maddeningly messy.

She steps into the shower and sighs to herself. Maybe she can handle messy. There's always soap and water.


End file.
